Enhancing Safety Auxiliary’s Gift Saves Time…and Lives

Left to right: Larry Kelfer, Immediate Past President, Auxiliary; Mary D. Farrell, Auxiliary President; Christine Craig, RN, Clinical Director of Emergency Services; and Euthym Kontaxis, MD, Section Chief, Emergency Medicine. 450Thanks to a generous gift by the Eisenhower Medical Center Auxiliary, patients needing imaging scans at Eisenhower’s Emergency Department no longer have to be wheeled to the basement of the adjacent hospital, away from the care and the resources of the attending physicians — they can now receive a CT Scan right there in the emergency room.

The Auxiliary voted at its last general meeting of 2004 to earmark a portion of its funds for a new scanner for emergency services.The scanner – a 16-slice SOMATOM Sensation from Siemens AG – incorporates the latest imaging technologies, and among other things, is cutting the treatment time and length of stay for emergency room patients. But perhaps the biggest benefit is patient safety.

“The major advantage is that this increases safety for our patients,” says Christine Craig, RN, Clinical Director of Emergency Services at Eisenhower Medical Center. “We’ve had several instances where patients have had seizures or cardiac arrest during the scanning process, and we were right there, able to treat them.”

The scanner is valued at approximately $1.2 million.According to Rhiannon Howell, Director of Volunteer Services at Eisenhower Medical Center, this money was raised through the Auxiliary’s annual Holiday Voices fundraiser and from revenues from the group’s two area resale stores: Collectors Corner and Collectors Corner Gallery.

“The volunteers were thrilled that the Auxiliary donated something so valuable and so meaningful to the hospital,”Howell says. “This will ultimately have an impact on everyone who visits the emergency room.”